Life Is Difficult For Everyone
Have you ever wondered why life is difficult? Why is it that often what we fantasize about is barely fulfilled and if it does, it is not as we had imagined? Sometimes our mind generates that feeling of emotional suffering through our thoughts. Now, is life difficult for everyone or just for some?
The truth is that everything depends on the perspective on which the world is observed and the attitude that is adopted to face the routine. We can find emotional distress in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Perhaps we worry about the past or the future. We can be angry or sad, feel bored, stressed, annoyed by physical pain … The important thing is what we do with this string of feelings.
Life is difficult for the human being
Perhaps the problem is that we have not evolved to be happy . Natural selection has its goals. Among them is that of reproducing successfully, which means surviving the time necessary to mate, find a mate, and then help our children to survive.
Natural selection and other forces of nature do not care why we enjoy life. Our happiness does not matter to them. However, we do care, and not a little.
It is logical that we like to be able to enjoy our life while we are here. This does not seem to be asking too much, although the survival of humanity is also necessary. But the reality is that we do not stop struggling, struggling to be happy. Many people find life difficult, this is often seen in psychology offices, on the streets, in homes, etc.
There is no friend, partner or family member that we know who does not find life some kind of emotional challenge. This leads us to think that life is not a bed of roses, far from it.
Have we evolved to be unhappy?
In a sense, yes. As we have discussed, what counts for natural selection is the survival of the species. Certain instincts and intellectual capacities that have helped humanity as a whole have also created certain consequences that are quite negative for us as individuals.
And it is that our thoughts have not changed much since homo sapiens appeared. This hominid used its brain to do all kinds of wonderful things leading to survival.
Homo sapiens thought abstractly, planned for the future, found new solutions to problems, and traded with their neighbors. But not everything was going smoothly millions of years ago.
Homo sapiens’ brains also caused problems for them. They were concerned about lions, rhinos, and hippos. They were envious of their neighbors, who lived in larger caves and on hot days they argued to see who would fetch water. Homo sapiens became irritable when it was cold and raining. He remembered how good it was in the sun. He became restless when the trees did not bear fruit and insect larvae were scarce.
Even when things were going well, homo sapiens also thought about the things that had gone wrong in the past and what might go wrong in the future. At that time they had a great chance of survival, that’s true, but they still felt concern.
In a sense, things haven’t changed much in the last 40,000 years. Our brains continue to cause us many headaches (pun intended).
Maybe we’re too smart for things to go well for us
As human beings, in addition to pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, we have other abilities that have made our survival possible. By themselves, our sensory organs are quite ineffective if we find ourselves abandoned in the middle of nature.
What we do have is an extraordinary ability to reason and plan. This ability allowed us to survive in the wild world by “thinking.” Our ancestors led us to the position of dominators (and destroyers if we are not careful) of the planet.
However, the ability to think often makes us miserable. Acts of thinking and planning, useful as they may be, are at the very source of our emotional distress. Unlike other tools, we are not able to put them aside when we do not need them.
Thought makes us worry about the future , feel sorry for the past, and constantly compare ourselves to others. Ultimately, through our mind, we make life difficult.
Thought is responsible for making life difficult
Our constant brooding makes it very difficult to be truly satisfied for more than a short time. Life is difficult because thinking can make it impossible for us to enjoy a good meal, a concert, or sleep when night falls.
Our reflections can send our feelings on an incessant roller coaster. Depending on our thoughts, emotions are propelled up or down our mood.
And it is that today we are intelligent, friendly and successful, and tomorrow we are clumsy, rejected or failures. The most casual observation of our mind can reveal that we are compulsive thinkers.
You may be asking yourself the following question: Could we stop thinking to be happier? That is the question. We can’t stop thinking to make life easier, but we can learn to tolerate and accept our thoughts. And it is that life is difficult, for everyone, but we can all make it a little easier if we train our minds for it.
